131148-one-major-problem-of-carbine-the-missing-skill-to-inform-new-and-potential-wildstar-players
Content ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- I guess I may be in the minority, but what got me hooked and had me unsub from other MMO's was the amazing leveling experience and atmosphere! What made me leave was the horrid class balance and MoO with interrupts. Difficulty and performance issues I guess were there, but did not drive me away in the slightest. For reference I subbed right away for 1 month and played solidly for that 1 month. I then quit and never came back. I'm looking at the game again with F2P around the corner to see how the issues I found have been addressed. I've tried the beta, and it appears that it was somewhat addressed, but is still mostly there. | |} ---- They don't share a lot with us when its in its production stage.. because things don't always turn out the way they like to. So its easier for them to just work on it till they feel they have it where they want it and then share it with us. That way the community don't grab their torches and cry monsters when it wasn't exactly the way they promised. Carbine compared to other mmo developers have maintained a rather well transparency with the community. But there are lot of things that they have to keep forced tongues no matter how much they want to tell us something. Thats just how it is with most companies and there is usually a method to the madness... Its definately frustrating when it seems like were speaking on deafened ears.. but to be fair they have done quit a bit of stuff that the community has asked for and there is more to come. I guess it can be hard for us realize that what we see vs what the game needs might be two different things from their point of view.. its not that their not listening to us but there might be a huge list of things to do that need to be done before they come around to it.. also were going to be more critical and even sinical right now because we all know that this could very well be carbines last stand to right the things that were done wrong on release. So we want to see this boat turned around and succeed and were going to be more opinionated about it until we see the change. Its common knowledge that this game does need more promotions not to the community but to prospective players who may never have heard of the game.. there is still a lot of uncharted territory out there.. this game didn't start out with the player base that other AAA mmos have so what losses it experienced had an even bigger impact on the game. Not to mention this game still has the hard core stigma in former players eyes as well as those that heard the horror stories of it so carbine has to work on creating a new reputation which isn't going to be easy no matter how much pr pushes for casual ect..Lets not forget that the current carbine is now the clean up crew to handle the dirty laundry that was left behind by the ones that had decided on things that had lead to this disaster in the first place....yeaaah i went there and I don't apologize for it. I have faith in what the devs are doing now. Im more concerned about the damaged reputation than anything else. Hopefully ws can overcome it. | |} ---- ---- Anyone remember drops 2 and 3? :ph34r: | |} ---- Drop 4 will fix it. | |} ---- That is a bit of a problem currently.. some of those heated arguments are in the works of being resolved however.. except maybe the rune one which I dont know to much about since havnt played with the new system in the ptr and probably wont until release. Edited September 5, 2015 by Rebel Angel | |} ---- While I don't disagree with you entirely, I'd like to know where you got your data for the assumption that most players left Wildstar for your proposed reasons. Your friends left because of that? There was a reddit thread about it? A youtube video said it? None of those are actually reliable metrics. The amount of people that actually POST on the forums, visit reddit, watch youtube reviews, and so on, is probably something like 5-10% of the ACTUAL playerbase. I'm pretty damn sure that Carbine is not stupid and they have WAAAAAAAAAAAY better data than you do about why people stopped playing Wildstar. Just saying. | |} ---- ---- How? There was no exit survey or anything. How does Carbine have any data on why someone left? I stopped subbing for 6 months and received no attempt at communication from them. How do they have this data? The best they have is what did people do, what level were they when they quit. Which is not concrete information in the least about why someone quit. Where is this pertinent data they supposedly have? | |} ---- >.>' <.<' I've not been stalking you in-game... and no I don't have a copy of you all via the transmat somewhere... | |} ---- ---- Carbine (and all MMO Dev companies that I'm aware of) track players Subscriptions, CREDD usage, and so on, and also what part of the game world the character stopped playing in, their faction, what level the player was, how far they were on their attunement quests, how many dungeons theyve completed, raid completion, pvp completion, pvp ranking, wins/losses, and so on. I'm not just pulling this fact out of nowhere either, Carbine Devs have stated multiple times on these forums that they have this data. If Wildstar recorded your progress in some way, that means the Devs can see that. You don't need to be willing to give them data. There is no need for a survey. By playing in their game world and by their rules, you automatically give the Devs statistics. Which is a good thing, because then the Devs can actually know whats better for their game in the future. Devs have said this before and I'm just repeating them: Trust them, they have better data than you do. Lots of people on the forums say "Devs suck I could do it better!" but they really have no clue what they're talking about because they can't see the REAL numbers. Edited September 6, 2015 by Seztren | |} ---- ---- I think the unfortunate thing is they're focusing too much on what F2P is changing and not enough on what has changed over the past year. There are a lot of players who quit shortly after launch and things like a revamped tutorial aren't the types of things that are going to draw them back in. I keep seeing people on Reddit complain about the long attunement process, gold medals in dungeons being the only way to get purple loot, the lack of solo end-game content, 40 man raids, gear imbalances in PvP, etc. Drop 6 is obviously making some fundamental changes to the game, and those should definitely be discussed. But seeing as this is being treated like a relaunch of the game, there should also be mention of many of the major complaints from early on being addressed - and just other things that have been added. The F2P transition shouldn't just be about getting new people, but trying to lure former players back. There just seems to be too much focus on the former and not enough on the latter - which is a little dumb since discussing things that might lure former players back in are things that also might be appealing to new players. | |} ---- ---- The same stories and excuses were said for drop 2, drop 3, drop 4 and drop 5. As Dea said, most of us have actually stopped believing and giving up hope. We are at the point where we simply do not care anymore, but are playing because we have these things ingame that are fun for us and have friends playing the game. | |} ---- ---- I could have told you that as soon as they announced F2P. Seen it happen in every transition | |} ---- So much to agree with in this post. +1. | |} ---- ---- You're right, they have said this before. And both you and they are making the same fundamental mistake of presuming that because they have access to all this information, they will in fact collect it, compile it, and interpret it sensibly. This is not an easy thing to do and their track record of doing it is not reassuring at all. The issue isn't that they don't have the real numbers, the issue is that they apparently have no idea how to extract them or what they mean. Remember the infinite farming exploit? How they reassured us that they had it all under control, no rollback necessary because zomg, not a loss of one whole day of progress! Raaaage! at the very idea of it? Yeah, that was BS. Turns out their version of "under control" was such precise measures as "find anyone who has a lot of plants in their inventory and nuke them hard" rather than "datamine to see who was acquiring materials at a faster rate than should even be possible, under conditions matching the requirements of the exploit". Remember when Timetravel was telling us all how doing the dungeons was the best predictor of player retention that they had, as if this meant that the dungeons were what was making people stay? Somehow, the people at Carbine didn't grasp "hey, maybe the fact that there's such a robust correlation between whether a player leaves or stays and whether a player gets through the dungeons or not is telling us something relevant to our abysmal player retention rates." It seems to me that most of the points brought up by the OP are entirely correct, and the few places where I disagree--the leveling game, for example, was generally very well received and well reviewed at launch and is more of a chore when it's being repeated than it is the first time through--are pretty minor in comparison. | |} ---- ---- ---- None of that has anything to do with the topic at hand or my post. My point was that the Devs probably made the changes they did to the game for F2P because of the data they had, that you don't. Saying "You're doing it all wrong, my friend said he quit because PvP sucked, so revamp PvP!" for example, is just worthless. The Devs have tons of data to work with, and people crying on the forums about their issues with the game don't have ANY data to work with. If you think you can do it better than all the Devs at Carbine, please, by all means, learn advanced programming and game design and apply for a job there. I'm pretty sure people at Carbine aren't dimwitted like people seem to think they are. You don't just press a magic "fix" button and automatically go through massive amounts of code and information and fix bugs and problems just like that. Edited September 7, 2015 by Seztren | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- And if you try this today people whine about how the game is too hard, incomplete and catered to #hardcore. God I miss the old days of playing games without being spoon fed everything. | |} ---- ---- I have a suggestion for you. Go play table top rpgs. Your own rules, level of difficulty and depth. Oh but wait. Didn't we used to have people grumbling that there were players that just liked to find the trickiest ways to become OP and just kill things with no regard for story? Didn't we have people complaining that some don't engage with the story enough and just rush through killing? Hmmm. You can't even agree between 6 acquaintances at a table, yet you will have success making thousands and millions agree to your idea of difficulty and fun? In the old days Internet and gaming communities were small. And we were all too excited to have graphics and games to pay enough mind to the little annoyances. But now companies want more money than that small group of people. Gaming has been spread to the masses. We also have much easier ways to communicate and make our opinions heard. And we have more options. And lastly... Even some of us from back then have changed. Different schedules, times, maybe even changed our idea of fun. Not to mention, once you have experienced a game that gives you new funner ways to play, it's hard to go backwards. It's hard to do tab target after you have played action games. It's hard to play call of duty after counterstrike or destiny or mass effect. You can build a niche game that caters to whatever you want. You just can't throw millions and a big production company behind it... Cause eventually you're gonna either not get the investment back or change to get your investment back. We can whine about others all we want. It doesn't solve anything except make you look idealistic and a bit foolish. We have had great food, no wonder we complain that a restaurant has bad fries. When you're starving, fast food is heavenly, when you have tasted better and are eating for pleasure... You get picky. I'm definitely pickier than I was back in 1997 when I thought quake was the best thing since sliced bread. I don't like bread and I tried playing the old quake games... Haha. | |} ---- I already do ;) Playing Vampire Sabbat, Werewolf The Apocalypse as TableTop at the moment. There have been changes though in gaming, and not all for the good. I do like a lot of the things we have now as well, online possibilities being one of them. But some things were simply better back then, quality being one of then ;) | |} ---- Yes, let's go back to the old days of gaming when didn't know better and our standards were all over the floor. Growing up is for the filthy casuals! | |} ---- I was just talking to my husband about this last night. We were in WoW (don't judge XD I've been on the PTR/Beta a lot lately and everything I wanna do on Live requires the new housing thingies!) and a guildie couldn't for the life of them figure out where to go for their quest...despite the golden arrow showing them, the highlighted blue spot on the map, and the quest text. We definitely went into the "remember when ALL you had to go off of was the quest text, and if that was vague, too frigging bad?" :D ^_^ We're not even "old" by any means >.< (I apologize, this might be a long post!) Overall, I do agree, though. I'm sure Carbine/NCsoft has more info on various parts or even most parts of why people left than we individually do...but then you have places like the forums, reddit, even twitter and facebook where players and ex-players have voiced their complaints. Loudly and quite often. I really wish I saw more Ads for WildStar in places :( I'm so very tired of being asked what I play these days and getting the response of "WildStar? What's that?" or "I thought that game failed?" or "People still play that?" I remember hearing about this game's open Beta but declined to try it since we had other games in mind, but then my husband got deployed and a friend showed me all the WildStar trailers right when Launch happened...holy cupcake, batman, I was hooked. Where are these trailers now? Where are the Ads? The promotions? I understand they wanna get people hyped but not TOO hyped since it's basically a re-launch, but how are we going to get more people to sign up for Beta, if they don't know about it? If they have to wade through the overly vocal toxic minority to learn anything about the game? They need to go more in-depth about what has changed over the entire year. People who left near launch or anywhere in between now and then don't wanna know about the tutorials. They want to know the big changes. DS has been downsized, dungeons are now entirely do-able now that we've had time to learn them and with the new changes coming. Shiphands! (Imagine how many people we might have kept had we had shiphands earlier!) Things like that. The bug fixes are important but we are so very not bug-free, as they've apparently said. I personally haven't run into anything game-breaking or overly annoying, bug-wise, but to say we're bug free is a bit...ballsy and a lie. As for the lack of information for new players, I don't...I don't know how I feel on that part. It's true, I'm not new to MMOs at -all- so maybe I'm just used to looking for information I might need or figuring it out on my own, but I don't understand how so many people get lost in or die to the tutorial bits. My cousin started MMO gaming when she was six and she still beats the crap out of her parents/my parents/her friends lol who've played for years longer. I understand that the combat might be new to you, or you might be new to gaming, and that people all have different lvls of skill (this action combat was entirely new to me but it wasnt hard to figure out at all) but still >.< How tutorialized do you want your tutorial to be? We already seem to have 3 different lvls of tutorial. And lastly, the part about the Content Finder. This might make me a bit annoyed to say, but WoW had that part right. In there, press Shift-J and you get the "Dungeon Journal", where you can view content suggested for your lvl of all kinds (Quests, PvP, PvE, Dungeons, Raids...), or you can go through and look at what all of the dungeons/raids are, their maps, what the bosses do each phase, and what loot they have the possibility to drop. While a #hardcore part of my brain considers that Hand-holding to the extreme, it seems like that's what might be needed here (the content info, not the hand-holding). I see so very many posts by new lvl 50s who have no idea what to do now that they've hit max lvl. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- To be fair, Carbine goes through managers like a 7 year old goes through Halloween candy. On some level, Madda thinks they know that their community input has suffered dramatically since launch, and they're trying desperately to find a competent one. | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- At PR? No, I'd say EA pretty much always says what they want to say, in time to convince people to buy their shitty games. | |} ----